This Sunday, December 15, Mayotte records the terrible damage caused the day before by Cyclone Chido in the poorest department in France, where relief is being organized. According to a very provisional report, this tropical cyclone of exceptional intensity has caused at least 14 deaths in the small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, a security source told AFP on Sunday morning. According to the mayor of Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, interviewed by AFP, nine injured people were treated at the Mayotte Hospital Center (CHM) in absolute emergency, and 246 in relative emergency.
With gusts observed at more than 220 km/h, Cyclone Chido is the most intense to hit Mayotte in more than 90 years, according to Météo France. Extremely violent winds ravaged the archipelago with electrical poles downed, trees uprooted and sheet metal roofs or partitions blown away in a territory where precarious housing affects at least a third of the population.
Appointed the day before to Matignon, François Bayrou participated on Saturday evening in an interministerial crisis meeting which he convened with the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau, on the situation in the archipelago. “State services are present and organized” in the face of a cyclone of “unexpected violence,” declared the Prime Minister at the end of this meeting. “It is a situation which is dramatic, which is absolutely exceptional”, with a human toll which could be “heavy”, but “the State is standing”, assured Bruno Retailleau at his side, specifying that it would be necessary “ probably days” to “refine” the human toll. The resigning minister is expected there on Monday in the company of his overseas counterpart, François-Noël Buffet.
The prefect of Reunion, responsible for the defense and security zone of the southern Indian Ocean, held a crisis management meeting this Sunday morning to coordinate relief action. From the start of the week, 162 civil security soldiers and firefighters from France will come to reinforce the 110 pre-positioned in the archipelago since Friday. Air and sea rotations are operational from Sunday to transport medical personnel and equipment. “The inventory of the needs of the emergency services and the populations continues in order to organize rotations, for as long as necessary,” indicates the defense zone prefecture in a press release.
“Everything was razed”
The situation suggests severe water supply difficulties in an archipelago already subject to cuts. In Kawéni, a neighborhood located in the commune of the Mahoran “capital” Mamoudzou, “everything was taken away, everything was razed”, Mounira, a resident of the largest French slum, told AFP on Saturday. the house was destroyed. More than 15,000 homes were deprived of electricity, according to the resigning Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. Telephone calls, including emergency ones, have been drastically limited. Closed until further notice to commercial flights, the airport, where gusts reached 226 km/h according to Météo-France, suffered significant damage, particularly in its control tower.
According to explanations to AFP from François Gourand, forecaster at Météo-France, Cyclone Chido is “exceptional” because it directly hit the archipelago, while its power was boosted by particularly warm waters in the Indian Ocean. linked to climate change.
The alert level was lowered from purple to red during the day on Saturday to allow emergency services to come out, but the prefect called on the approximately 320,000 inhabitants of Mayotte to remain “confined” and “in solidarity” in “this ordeal”. Around 100,000 people living in “unsound housing”, particularly in sheet metal huts, had been identified in the archipelago by the authorities to be sheltered in more than 70 emergency accommodation centers.